Between World War I and 1970 more than 6 million African Americans left the rural south in what came to be known as The Great Migration. They were pulled by the lure of better jobs in the north and pushed by the oppression of Jim Crow. The son of two of the earliest migrants, Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City. From 1940-41 he painted 60 panels depicting the realities of this migration. Thirty of those panels are now housed in The Phillips Collection in Washington DC. Erica Harper, the Head of the K-12 Initiatives, will give us a tour of those 30 panels and teach us more about one of the most important painters in this country’s history.

The program recording is available on Wilmington Memorial Library's Youtube channel.

Register through Zoom.
 
You can learn more about The Migration Series and The Phillips Collection here.

This program is hosted by Wilmington Memorial Library in collaboration with several libraries, including Memorial Hall Library.